Of greater moment were the efforts made to stir up the northern
barbarians and the Greeks to rebellion against Rome. Philip had
conceived the project of crushing the old enemies of Macedonia,
the Dardani in what is now Servia, by means of another still more
barbarous horde of Germanic descent brought from the left bank of the
Danube, the Bastarnae, and of then marching in person with these and
with the whole avalanche of peoples thus set in motion by the land-
route to Italy and invading Lombardy, the Alpine passes leading to
which he had already sent spies to reconnoitre--a grand project,
worthy of Hannibal, and doubtless immediately suggested by Hannibal's
passage of the Alps.

It is more than probable that this gave occasion
to the founding of the Roman fortress of Aquileia,(2) which was formed
towards the end of the reign of Philip (573), and did not harmonize
with the system followed elsewhere by the Romans in the establishment
of fortresses in Italy. The plan, however, was thwarted by the
desperate resistance of the Dardani and of the adjoining tribes
concerned; the Bastarnae were obliged to retreat, and the whole horde
were drowned in returning home by the giving way of the ice on the
Danube.

The king now sought at least to extend his clientship among
the chieftains of the Illyrian land, the modern Dalmatia and northern
Albania. One of these who faithfully adhered to Rome, Arthetaurus,
perished, not without the cognizance of Perseus, by the hand of an
assassin. The most considerable of the whole, Genthius the son and
heir of Pleuratus, was, like his father, nominally in alliance with
Rome; but the ambassadors of Issa, a Greek town on one of the
Dalmatian islands, informed the senate, that Perseus had a secret
understanding with the young, weak, and drunken prince, and that
the envoys of Genthius served as spies for Perseus in Rome.